This Week in Posters is back, now with more Creepy Jake Gyllenhaal. Okay, so I didn’t put him in all the posters, that would’ve been way too much work. Nonetheless, it’s Tuesday, so I’ve got your weekly fill of suggestive sex, diagonals, Photoshop disasters, Avengers stuff, and inscrutable imagery. Enjoy!
Oh come on, you couldn’t think of a better subtitle than “A year on ice?” It’s Antarctica, we get it, it’s cold, there’s snow and ice and penguins. At least give us a twist. Antarctica: One of These Penguins Is Gay.
Sometimes I feel like Marvel is having a contest with itself to see how little they can put out that will still have people peeing their pants with excitement. I’d love to see them release ten posters that if you put them all together in just the right way, you can make the “A” in the Avengers: Age Of Ulton logo. People would still freak.
Hmm, okay, let’s break this down… So the polaroids are for the police trying to solve a missing persons case, and the one has a gold star on it because she’s a young white girl that everyone’s worried about, and the other is just some dude who didn’t even bother to shave and so the cops tried to throw his case into the fire. Is that what you’re getting? It’s either that or some kind of magical realist thing where the cigarette in the picture is burning the actual picture.
I bet Ron Perlman did it.
I haven’t seen the film yet and already this giant blob dude is my favorite Pixar character since Wall-E. Can they just make non-human characters forever? Those are my favorite.
Chris Hemsworth plays a computer hacker in this, which I love. “Hmm, how can we make this God-like Viking romance novel model look more like a computer coder?”
“Hmm, I dunno, maybe mess up his hair a little?”
“Good idea.” (*stylist tries to mess up Chris Hemsworth’s hair, he ends up with a single tendril hanging broodily in front of his face*)
“What the hell is this? He’s even handsomer than before!”
All I can think of when I look at this is that scene in Spaceballs where they’re holding their Schwartzes out in front of them like dicks and arguing about whose is bigger. That’s never not going to be relevant.
BORN TO RULE, or to be the lead singer in a new wave band, either way. If you stare at him long enough, you can actually hear the moog synthesizers.
Wait, are you trying to contrast these two characters? Because “Born to rule” and “destined to lead” are kind of just different ways to say the same thing.
A story about a father and son, “Fall,” a winter scene, Michael Murphy, Terrance Odette… I feel like this poster came from a parallel universe where I might know what any of these things mean.
Fear Clinic, the first horror movie inspired by an STD test.
Here we have the first of two posters for Furious 7, aka 7 Fast 7 Furious. Basically, they’ve take the classic “between the legs” poster shot and applied it to a car, which makes a lot of sense for a franchise most people have long called “car porn.”
Mmm, car vagina.
Wait, how did The Rock get in front, he only got here like two movies ago! Anyway, they screwed up by not Photoshopping Michelle Rodriguez’s body in front of The Rock’s. If he was actually in front, the top of this would cut off everything above his nipple.
Poor Michelle Rodriguez, Photoshopping profiles is hard.
Mark Wahlberg supposedly lost 60 pounds for this role, but it sort of just looks like he gained a few pounds of hair.
I’ve had people ask me whether every name and face on every poster should match up. No, I don’t think the person’s name should always have to appear above or below their face, but if you’re going to put a name right above or below someone’s face, shouldn’t it be the right name? Anyway, this might be one of the least evocative posters ever. What’s she staring at, Al Pacino’s hair? …Okay, I suppose that makes sense. It looks like he just kept one of his wigs from the Phil Specter biopic.
This is “Kill the Messenger,” for all of you no-Spanish speaking pendejos out there.
I gather that it’s about PHONE CALLS! COVER UP! SMUGGLING! THE GOVERNMENT! Did they try to rip off the opening credits from Homeland? Needs more plaintive jazz trumpet.
I’ll see just about any Sam Rockwell/Chloe Moretz movie, but with a tagline like “Growing up just isn’t everybody’s thing,” you might as well call it Literally Any Sundance Comedy. Sam Rockwell’s pose says “why did you just throw my Blackberry in the ocean? My whole life was in there!” While Keira Knightley’s says “I’m just a free spirit trying to teach you to loosen up.”
Okay, I give up, I’m googling it.
A mercenary group is sent into Afghanistan for a highly secretive mission, only to wake up in a mental asylum with no memory of what happened, and half of their team dead. Fed a new PTSD medication to help trigger their memories, a secret comes to light, that threatens their lives if they tell.
Ah, now I get it. Looking at that poster, I was wondering if the soldiers were supposed to represent the painkillers, running around a guy’s brain blowing away his dopamine receptors. And then the camera would pull out and there’d just be some dude drooling on himself after an Oxy rail. This sounds cool too though.
Yes, those penguins are perfectly disguised for, uh… a striped… a striped room? Do they have those in Madagascar? I don’t get it.
Sometimes I wonder if part of the draw of Saw is the idea that we’re all special enough for someone to dream up some crazy elaborate Rube-Goldberg murder machine instead of just shooting us in the face.
Now here’s a movie that’s proud of its title.
Aside from the vague sexiness, you have to respect a poster with a pull quote that actually gives you a sense of what the movie’s about.
Ooh, I bet Alice has a troubled past, maybe a few dark secrets. Either that or she never moves from this one pose, and that’s why everyone calls her “Still Alice.”
A pubic pentagram and flaming font? Oh, Teen Lust, you’re a poster after my own heart. Vagina Pentata, I love it.
After that last poster, all I can see is a side view of a woman laying on her back.With a tree growing out of her landing strip. Oh God I need help.
Ah yes, painting the stars and stripes on something, the ultimate in half-assed symbolism. It just screams “It’s like, a metaphor for imperialism or something.”